Opinions by Curmudgeon are his alone (excepting homilies). They are not the views of his parish or denomination.

Translate

Friday, January 11, 2013

Culture Shock

Strange Foreign Customs

In the latter half of the 1990s I
visited a foreign country. While there I attended a dance that was an outreach event.
Two disclosures are in order. First, though I wish I could, I can’t dance. Any
possibilities I might have had to overcome my natural inability by practice so
that I might at least get by on the dance floor were quashed by my
fundamentalistic upbringing in which dancing was classed with drinking,
smoking, and card playing. Second, I am real stick in the mud when it comes the
work of the church. Even if I were “a certified dancin’ fool” I would not
employ dance as part of an evangelistic strategy.

What follows is a column I wrote
while reflecting on my overseas experience. It appeared originally as a Soul Food column in the June 5, 1999,
edition of World magazine. This was
back before World’’s spiritual
columns went in the direction of having a good cry with one’s mother. The
material below is dated not only in that it was published 13 ½ years ago, but
also in that the always trendy but always behind kind of evangelicalism it
describes continues in its evolution of outreach methods. A pleasant consequence of the publication of the
column was that I received a letter of appreciation from Dr. James W.
Alexander, President Emeritus of InterVarsity Christian Fellowship.

"Lord, now lettest thy servant depart in
perplexity, for he thinketh he hath not yet seen thy salvation, and if this be
it, he thinketh he cannot adjust."

I wrote that "prayer" after a
particularly difficult cross-cultural experience. It happened in a foreign
country, but it was not the culture of that country which challenged me. It was
the culture of late 20th-century American evangelicalism exported to that
country that created a cultural barrier I could not cross. I had attended a
dance during which I witnessed dancers jitterbugging to the lyrics of a song
blaring over speakers: "Get up, get up, get up, get up, get up in Jesus'
name!" ( Here is a "live" version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FXaZuXIGodg )

My perplexity rose from "cognitive
dissonance"-the incompatibility between what I witnessed at the
"evangelistic dance" and what I know were the mission methods of the
greatest of all evangelists-the Apostle Paul. It is not that I oppose all
dancing. Although I think that some forms of what passes for dancing today are
unambiguously and intentionally erotic, I believe that folk and recreational
dancing are innocent enough. But when I read in Acts how Paul evangelized and
planted churches, I can't imagine his using-in, say, Thessalonica or
Corinth-the first-century equivalent of country line dancing as a means to
attract unbelievers and the context in which to make his preliminary
presentation of the gospel. I am convinced that the Apostle who wrote, "in
Christ we speak before God with sincerity, like men sent from God" (2 Corinthians
2:17), would have rejected such a method as trivializing or obscuring his
message.

When I returned home from my overseas
experience, one of my church members handed me a brochure announcing the start
of a new congregation belonging to one of the traditional "holiness"
denominations. The brochure is filled with cute pictures of a little child. It
promises those who come that they will "find people just like you,"
"hear positive practical messages," experience "upbeat
contemporary music in a relaxed atmosphere," and, most important, "be
loved" and "be accepted." Give the brochure's author credit. It
is a textbook "church growth movement" approach to the unchurched.

But, if you believe Paul sets the
church-planting pattern that we should follow (which I do), this brochure and
the gospel jitterbug are almost totally disconnected from his pattern. What
would Paul say about the people you might meet in one of the congregations he
founded? "You may find a lot of people very unlike you because Christ has
torn down the dividing barriers. You may find Jews and gentiles, slaves and
freemen, men and women-all brought near to God and to one another by the
cross."

What might the Apostle say about his
message? "I never preached a positive, practical message in my life. I'm
not interested in telling you how to be a better friend or to get more out of
life. I preach the sin-caused human predicament. I preach the saving acts of
God in Christ's death, resurrection, and ascension. I preach doctrines,
especially justification by faith. My ethic is to declare the indicative (what
you are by union with Christ) and then give the imperative (what you must be
and do as a result)."

And what about music? "We sing the Old
Testament psalms to which we added New Testament songs strong on doctrine. We
sing from our hearts to praise God and to build each other up in the
faith."

But what about love and acceptance? "I
preach God's unconditional love and his total acceptance of all those who
believe the gospel, but his rejection and condemnation of all who continue in
rebellion. I teach Christians to love and accept each other in Christ, but not
to the exclusion of mutual accountability."

It has frequently been observed that
evangelicalism today is a mile wide and an inch deep. That kind of
evangelicalism is not worth preserving into a new century or propagating in
another culture. It cannot stand up under the pressure of "trouble or
persecution because of the word" that may result when a country's economy
collapses or its unity is destroyed by civil war. Nor can it stand up to
"the worries of this life and the deceitfulness of wealth" that are
so characteristic of prosperous America.
We need to re-dig the channel even at the cost, if necessary, of temporarily
narrowing the river, so that the gospel message can flow freely using gospel
methods. There is no other way to do that than by adopting Paul's practice:
"We do not use deception, nor do we distort the word of God. On the
contrary, by setting forth the truth plainly we commend ourselves to every
man's conscience in the sight of God" (2 Corinthians 4:2).